


McQuaid, Or Not McQuaid?

by yuletide_archivist



Category: 21 Jump Street (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-23
Updated: 2007-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every day in the line of duty they pretend to be somebody else, but what happens when partners begin to wonder about the real person hiding behind the McQuaid facade? Slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	McQuaid, Or Not McQuaid?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Waldo

 

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"A display of insincere behavior: act, disguise, dissemblance, masquerade, pretense, sham, show, simulation." Tom Hanson frowned down at his copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, eyes skimming relentlessly over the battered and torn page which held the definition of that one word: acting.

Acting, it was what they did, it was their job. Come into a school, play a role and bust some bad guys by pretending to even "badder" guys. Simple concept really, they were just good guys in wolves clothing, so why did this make him feel so bad? No, it wasn't the people they busted that made his insides churn this way, it was what had happened while playing pretend.. So intently did Tom Hanson ponder over those words that he didn't even realize that someone had crept up on him until the car door across from him was ripped open.

"What're you doing?" Doug Penhall asked, throwing his weight so violently into the passenger side seat that the car rocked back and forth like a schooner at sea with a fallen mast and elicited tiny squeaks of protest from the shocks. 

"Homework," he answered brusquely and shut the book in a vain attempt to fight through the sudden moment of stiffness. Wishful thinking.

"Homework?" Penhall snorted, making the term sound like an ugly, detestable little word, one like Chlamydia and leaned in close to look over his shoulder at the book. "McQuaids don't do homework. Yah?"

"Yah." he echoed raising his fist in a halfhearted salute and began ferreting away any rogue thoughts that action brought up as far back in his mind as possible. 

Doug stared daggers at him, and then unexpectedly grabbed his arm and held onto it tightly. "Is something wrong?"

"No.." A surge of emotion flickered throughout his entire body, a tiny jolt of fear, uncertainty and something.. else. Something that he desperately didn't want to think about now. Memories, no, words were assaulting his mind, fighting to escape out of his mouth. Words that he wanted to speak, words that stuck in his throat, and words made him feel queasy. 

How could he possibly say anything about how he felt now? He knew what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to say here, and knew exactly what would happen afterward as well as if it were scripted. First he would sit and scowl, then Doug would make some dumb joke, then they would have a moment of silence where neither of them spoke, and then they both would laugh. Then, and then, and then again, everything would go back to normal. Like always. 

Gently he disengaged his arm from Doug's grasp and started his car. "Look, just leave it alone."

Penhall still held him paralyzed by that same inscrutable stare, but Tom held firm to the shaky ground that he stood on and said nothing. Finally, he felt Doug's offense breakdown in defeat as he did what was asked of him. He let it go and said nothing more, no questions, no words, nothing, nothing and nothing.

Time and time again while he drove, Tom shot quick cursory glances out of the corner of his eye at the larger man. He could tell that his partner was stung by the dismissal, his refusal to communicate. That tiny, almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes and equally minuscule twist of his mouth was the only tell that Tom needed to know for sure. 

He wanted to tell Doug what was bothering him, he truly did and several times on the ride back to the chapel he tried, but.. But, the fear of being treated like some kind of bug in a Kafka novel when the truth was revealed was overwhelming. This fear sent images spiraling into his mind of an alternate reality, a world of what could come to pass, what could happen if he allowed the words to leap free from his mouth. Each and every scenario ended badly or worse. No, he couldn't ever allow that, and when Tom's mind did emerge back into reality he was feeling broken and dismayed. 

The rest of the ride was spent in an ominous silence, a dead sure sign that something was wrong. That joke that he had been expecting from Doug never showed it face. Their trip was a long, wordless journey where not even looks were exchanged, and by the time they reached their destination, Tom felt like he had spent the whole ride sitting next to a stranger.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Doug Penhall sat idly at his desk, fingers drumming a mindless tune as he pondered over the events of the past few days and wondering just what in hell had happened. Things had fallen apart between them while working on their last case, that much he knew for sure, and it had all started with the McQuaid ruse and a simple joke gone terribly wrong. 

During an especially boring lecture on basic math, Tom had curled up in his seat, and fallen asleep. Looking over at his dark head resting on the open math textbook, mouth half open and making tiny snorting snoring sounds like a little piglet, a brilliant idea had dawned upon Doug. Now normally, he would have been loathe to disturb such an idyllic sleep, but on this particular case their suspects were into "some extreme, crazy ass shit pranks," as they liked to put it and it had been too good a chance to get an in with them to pass up.

"Red light!" Doug called to the guys in the back row, but not loud enough to awaken his "brother" and stole a Twinkie from the lunch bag of a girl sitting across from him. After a quick plunge of his index finger into some creamy goodness, he strutted up to the sleeping Tommy McQuaid and unzipped his fly. He then made humping motions in front of his face to the amusement of the whole class and jammed his gooey finger inside Tommy's open mouth. Confused and not quite sure what had been shoved inside his mouth Tommy had jerked up in his seat and looked around distressed and apprehensive. 

"Thanks bro!" Doug grinned and made a show of zipping up his fly. Hanson had looked at him with a mixture of pure shock and horror before wiping his mouth with a hand that came away sticky and smeared with white goo. "I needed a quickie."

"Ah, eh damn you, Doug!" He sputtered and looked pissed as all hell. Doug laughed right in his face as Tom leapt up and started pummeling him causing the whole class to erupt into cheers. 

They had been shoving back and forth at first and then that somehow turned into a contest and Doug had forgotten his own strength.. and nearly knocked Tom halfway across the room. What happened next got a little scrambled in his head but he did remember that girl Shelly or Kelly had said something along the lines of kissing and making up. So when Tom bounced back onto his feet like some kind of cracked out Weeble Wobble he had hopped over and planted a kiss right smack on his lips.

Never in his wildest dreams would he have expected Tom to respond by pulling their bodies together in a brutally crushing open mouthed kiss, but he did. He always liked the taste of bitter raw real things, that had been his first abstract thought, mind trying to chase away the more rational ideas, like not kiss his partner in public, but oh well. It had been a joke after all, right? Then as quickly as he had initiated the contact Tommy had broken away leaving him with face flushed beet red and chest heaving in confounded, labored breaths. 

"Woo! McQuaid brothers, keeping it in the family!"

Turned out that one simple prank was all that was necessary to get in good with those trickster fools who had blown up their school mascot, and several other bystanders at last months football game. They were able to intervene in time before they could pull a similar job at a neighboring school. Everything should have been all good from then on, but no. Tom remained distant and cold to him and even though he wanted to play dumb, in his heart he pretty much knew enough to know why. Tom, he always tried to never look too closely at his partner because whenever he did, that same feeling of having just stepped off of a cliff always followed. With prominent cheekbones and dark hair that fell into his eyes like dark wings Hanson was.. Well, he was beautiful, and when he had kissed him, his mind had gone blank, throw off balance. Now everything was upside down and there was only one way that he could think of to set it right side up again.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Yo! Hanson, wait up!" A voice called to his back as he headed out to his car after his long day of filling out boring paperwork was finally finished. Internally he cringed knowing perfectly well who was following him, and tried to quicken his pace, but to no avail, as Doug easily caught up and fell into step with him. "Are you still pissed about the kiss?" 

Tom scowled, and he found himself surprisingly grateful for the scorn in Doug's voice for it helped him to pack his heart with ice. "I'm not angry about the kiss." It was a lie, and yet wasn't all at the same time. "You should be more worried about how dry humped my face, man!"

"Are you sure the problem isn't how I wowed you with how great of a kisser I am?" Doug joked, seeming to know that they were at some kind of crucial junction, but couldn't tell which way to travel, so he fell back on what he did best and made a lame ass joke far too late for it to ever fit into the scripted life of "Tommy and Dougie Undercover Coppers." 

"Nothing is the problem, Doug." Tom insisted with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. "Doug Penhall didn't even kiss me, it was Doug McQuaid, remember?" 

What he just said probably wouldn't make any sense to Doug, hell, he barely understood it himself, but everything was different when they were playing a role. They were just Doug and Tommy McQuaid messing around with one another, no harm, no foul. That was the way it should be, but this time it had been Doug Penhall kissing Tom Hanson, and he wanted him to know that. They had trampled over sacred boundaries and broken through to the other side of something that never even existed before that day and now he didn't know if he could forgive Doug, much less himself for that. 

"I don't know," Doug shrugged his shoulders in exasperation. "I think that you just get a little caught up in all of this sometimes, and it gets hard to see the real you in all the people you pretend to be."

"Oh?" Hanson raised an eyebrow, and then gave him a sideways look. He hadn't thought for a single moment that Doug would.. understand and know how he felt. It couldn't be possible that he might.. feel the same way too..?

"How much of that was real, Tom?" Doug asked with a strange melancholy expression on his face and confirming all of his suspicions. "Where did the real you begin and Tommy McQuaid end?"

"I think that when you're with somebody all the time, and they look out for you the same way that you look out for them a.. a bond.. grows." Tom babbled nonsensically and once he had expelled all the word camouflage that he could hink up on such short notice, he drew in a swift breath that shook him. There were too many things in his head right now, and he didn't think he could handle formulating up a proper response right now, so he just spewed all that touchy feely crap that the pysch counselors liked to hand to them. 

"Yeah, something grows." Doug grumbled and Tom could only gape at him with wide eyes. He could feel the blush fanning over his face, and couldn't quell it, not even when the feeling traveled into his belly and made it ache. 

Everything was an inky reality now, and there was a distant logic that defined the terms of their partnership but Tom couldn't comprehend it any longer, his brain seemingly stuck in a state of dazed astonishment. 

Doug didn't request permission, yet even as he pulled in close, he still did not initiate contact. He just let his hot breath tantalize the tender flesh of the Tom's lips until he gasped and closed his eyes when he felt the weight of two heavy hands descending down upon him, the left lighting on his shoulder and the right cupping his chin and lifting his face. Then and only then did Doug press his body into him and place a feather light kiss on his lips. It started out delicate, almost chaste at first, but then slowly Doug began to employ the use of his tongue, pushing inside, warm and gentle. Feeling torn and conflicted Tom stood frozen, determined to keep his body rigid, not daring to move an inch, so prepared for all this to be yet another in an endless string of Doug Penhall pranks pulled at his expense.

"Who's the better kisser?" Doug asked rather skeptically, speaking with lips still touching his flesh and Tom opened his eyes for the first time. "Me, or Doug McQuaid?"

"I think.." Looking into those puppy dog eyes all his discomfort left him and he could feel his body buzzing with the blood rushing through his veins. "I think that Doug McQuaid has nothing on Doug Penhall." 

When Doug gave him that broad shit eating grin, Tom found that couldn't stare into those eyes, not for too long without getting caught up in them and falling lightheaded and hypnotized. Now they also had an opiate effect on him and he felt relaxed and comfortable in the strong arms which wrapped firmly around his body. When questing lips found him again, this time he kissed back, hands tenderly slipping through shaggy, unkempt hair and fingering the silken soft of it. 

"Would Tom Hanson like to take Doug Penhall back to his place?" Doug smiled warmly at him, dissolving his body into a murky puddle below as his heart went galloping away from him. The feeling that had sequestered itself in his abdomen now ran free like wildfire throughout all of his body until it reached his fingers and toes. 

"I think that Tom Hanson would like very much for Doug Penhall to do that, yes.." Tom whispered when he could finally speak, and slung what he hoped looked like a collegial arm to any nosey onlookers around Doug's shoulder, and hauled his partner to his car. 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

 


End file.
